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Hello everyone. It's been approximately two months since the release of the Beta/Early Access version of Pirate Souls. We had some issues during the first weeks, but we are glad to say that we overcame most of them. Login On the day of the release, the only way to play the game was by using an Hitspark (Nin Online) account. It was a bit confusing as people were expecting to use a Pirate Souls account or a steam one. We decided to add an option to create an account using Pirate Souls website and the use of the Hitspark one is now optional. Our plan is to make so that all players have a Pirate Souls account as first login method so if there is an issue with Hitspark login, they will not be affected. Tutorial and Early Game We had a lot of complains about the tutorial being "bare bones". The lack of guidance once outside of the Formation Center was not giving purpose to new players to continue playing. To make things more obvious, we added explicit icons to important locations and tutorial cards to important steps of the game. We also changed some early level quests and added a new low-level item, so the leveling process is more fun. Some new players were discouraged by higher levels being real pirates and killing on sight. As an open world PvP game, this is something to expect. However, it doesn't match our vision of the game as we want Pirate Souls to be more about team PvP and exploration. Someone starting the game doesn't have the chance to form a team nor to explore. Quitting the game without seeing all what it has to offer is a bit sad. To bypass that issue, we introduced Peace Mode, a white flag disabling all kinds of PvP, so players can progress through their journey without being constantly killed. Rubber banding Some players were having rubber banding/lag issues that was making the game unenjoyable. After a lot of tests and resolution tentative, we finally found out what was causing that issue and the game is now much smoother running with high ping players. Crashes Period During approximately one week, a lot of players experienced some crashes. Those were caused by some rework we did to how assets (items, sounds, music, etc.) are loaded in the game. We wanted to fix micro freezes some players were experiencing when playing the game. Unfortunately, the tests we did were not complete enough to detect all the possible crashes. To apologize, we increased experience rates by 15 % for one day. We understood our mistake and next time, we will make sure to test with a small group of players first before pushing any major updates. Main Focus Our main focus is to increase the player’s retention before expending Pirate Souls Universe. We did a lot of updates having that in mind. The most notable ones are probably the ones regarding the early game experience, but we also pushed some updates for high-level players. The Marines's Fortress war event is the best example of that. It introduced a way to use achievements to gain more stats. It also made it possible to trade keys for higher tier keys or some reputation. Providing more long-term objectives. Another vision we have for the game is for it to be a team game about hanging out with friends, exploring, finding treasures, and doing bosses together. Just like a pirate crew or a marine division would do. The first big update we did was the introduction of the higher-level boss Sauro. Who can only be fought by players on a crew. Near Future Roadmap Automated events. Improve maps. Smoke fruit. New weapons. New cosmetics. Long Term Road Map. Ship system. New Islands. Thanks for playing Pirate Souls, your support does mean a lot to us! We will continue to work in order to make this a nice free to play game without pay to win mechanisms!

Hello sailors, Here are some previews of the first island. You may think everything looks the same, but each island has its characteristics so I prefer not to create a big map with a lot of variety everywhere, because in a bigger scale all maps will look the same. For the first island, I focused on basic nature. It is mostly covered by trees, bushes and cliffs. However, there are special zones like the Marines Base, caves and some secret places. I tried to make each map in a way players can guess what's going on in the island by just exploring them. There will be quests that will help on that, but it's always interesting when quests are related to maps. Thanks for your time, Shenmue Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Jan 20th, 2021 on indieDB

Approximately 3 months ago we released the alpha version of Pirate Souls. It was a very nice moment, and we would like to thank everyone who played the game even if it was full of exploits and bugs. Thanks to them, we managed to make the game stable and pushed forward some quality-of-life features we didn’t think about. For example, the auto-aim range functionality, which was originally a player suggestion, helped us balance the sniper specialization and gave us more control over weapon mechanisms. ALPHA At this point, we feel like the alpha is complete and doesn’t need any more updates. We may update it if a major bug is found, but we expect next improvements to be released the same time as beta will. For now, the alpha is a good stable introduction to Pirate Souls. It has all the features we wanted for the game: some interesting PVP mechanisms, crew system, bounty system, ranking system, multiple quests, various maps, many bosses, etc. It was originally planned to shut down the server at this point, but as new players still join our discord, we decided to keep it online so they can still try the game if they wish to. However, from now on, we will focus our energy on the beta. BETA I am glad to inform that the beta is progressing well. There are still a lot of work to be done, but we are consistent in our progression. We don’t have any date in mind about the beta release, but we are pretty sure it will not be this year. Our main goal for the Beta is to expand Pirate Souls Universe. We definitely want more islands, quests, techniques, soul fruits, clothes and mobs. We also want to improve the crew system by making so marines’ players will be part of one big organization in which they could create their own crew and pirates will be able to form alliances and create a big organization. We may also add a rebel/revolutionary organization, but we still have to think more in depth about it. We also want crews to be able to use their own ship to navigate between islands. However, this will probably be the hardest feature to implement so we will probably do it last. To summarize, we will no longer update the alpha version of the game, but we are still working on Pirate Souls. We will make sure to post screenshots and videos on social media in order to keep you updated. Thanks to all the ones who played the game. The adventure just begins! Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Oct 11th, 2021 on indieDB

I want the art of Pirate Souls to remind the work of Eichiiro Oda, without being the same. So, when working on the Marines’ Base, I tried to make it so we could notice the inspiration. There’s a zone for prisoners. The idea behind that is to put forward the fact that Pirate Souls timeline starts many years after a great pirate era. There are more prisoners, because more pirates started sailing. prisoners.mp4 I published a speed drawing video on YouTube about the prisoners. If you are interested on how I did them, you can check the video here: Marines' Prisoners Speed Drawing Since there are more prisoners, Marine forces need more people. That’s why there’s a zone near the Marines’ Base where some officers can stay. Non-marine players that come near the base will have to fight them. Be careful, some are equipped with a sword. Thanks for your time,Shenmue Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Jan 24th, 2021 on indieDB

Hello everyone! I am pleased to announce you that we will finally start to use Pirate Souls’ website/forums to post updates about the state of the game and anything new or upcoming related to it. This means that the bug reports and suggestions won't be done on discord anymore but here instead once the beta releases (the first of July). So let's start with some pretty big news! Hitspark Login Some of you probably already noticed it, but Pirate Souls will use Hitspark account for the beta. Which means that everyone who already has a Nin Online account won't have to create a new one for Pirate Souls. And every new Pirate Souls account (so Hitspark account) can be used to play Nin Online too. This will allow a player who plays both games to switch between them with ease and much more! You can read the rules and guidelines, privacy policy and the terms of service if you need more information. Thanks for your time, Dona

Hello everybody, we are glad to announce that Pirate Souls Beta is going to release the 1st July on Steam! Approximately one year after the alpha. Click on the link below to go to the Steam page of the game. Go to Pirate Souls Steam page ABOUT THE BETA Like explained in the article about the progression of the beta we posted in January, we have been working on a lot of features and improved a lot of existing ones. Compared to the alpha, the beta will have more islands, quests, bosses, techniques, items and more. It will also have new features. The most interesting ones are probably marines global organization and pirates crew alliances. Marines officers will evolve in the same organization and will get higher ranks by doing quests or by being promoted by their superiors. It's a bit different for pirates. They can have their own organization only if they form alliance with other pirate crews. Alpha players will notice some new little features like the grapple hook system, the shop item preview and mobs having unique ability starting from level 30. We have also improved a lot of elements like maps, NPCs, spells and game stability. We hope alpha players will be pleased by the game progression. pirateSoulsManEaterT.mp4 pirateSoulsStarRaysTechnique.mp4 CORE CHANGES As the game now has more content, the level cap for the beta is 55. In order to make the progression feel smoother, we decided to add a level requirement to soul fruits (level 30 or above). Once you have eaten the fruit, the stat linked to your specialization will partially reset so you will be able to change your build. One concern we had about the alpha fighting system is the lack of skill shots, because of the auto aim feature. To fix that, we decided that auto aim will now slightly decrease attacks and techniques damage. SPECIAL THANKS We would like to thank our Discord community for their support! Without them, the game would not have been in its current state. Special thanks to our publisher, Hitspark, and to the developers of Intersect Engine. If you want to stay connected to Pirate Souls and see the progression of the beta, below are the links to follow. Note that we will now start hosting special events in our Discord. You will be able to win exclusive roles and special in game items! Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Mar 19th, 2022 on indieDB

Last year has been a rich year for Pirate Souls. In July, we released the alpha version of the game and the community answered to the call. Thanks to them, we found major bugs and improved the game experience. In October, the alpha was finally stable and we decided to focus on the beta. With all the progress we have done, we are glad to announce that we target this summer for the beta release. NEW FEATURES The beta will add new maps, quests, bosses, techniques and features. One of the features we are the most excited about is the crew alliance one. With crew alliance, pirates will be able to join their forces to compete against the marines. Marines will have a global organization, which is like one big alliance. Some of the features we were considering for the beta may not be done in time if we want to release it this year. As we were progressing on the game, we realized that the boat navigation system will be a big challenge. We don't know if it will be done for this summer, but we will try to. pirateSoulsGrappleSystem.mp4 pirateSoulsMarineFortressEntrance2.mp4 IMPROVEMENTS DONE The beta does more than expanding Pirate Souls' universe. It also improves what is already existing. For example, NPCs logic has been improved. They can now cast projectiles in 360 degrees and fighting them is more intuitive as they give hint on when and how they will attack. Techniques’ logic has also been improved. We now have more freedom over what kind of technique we can create. For example, the leopard Soul Fruit Claws Strike technique now moves forward the player and then cast the attack. This is just one little example of what we made possible. We cannot wait to show you more! pirateSoulsLeopardDashSkill.mp4 The alpha version of Pirate Souls is still available. Thanks for your time, Shenmue Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Jan 7th, 2022 on indieDB

In our latest article about the alpha release, we wrote about the fact that we still need to work on end-game content and that bounty system is going to be one of our main concern. We are finally ready to show off some previews of it. However, before going into the bounty system, we would like to thank everyone who played the alpha. We had a lot of positive feedback and great criticisms. Here are some pictures of the exploration side of the game. A side we didn't put forward so far. PIRATE SOULS BOUNTY SYSTEM After a certain level, everyone can put a bounty on the head of everyone. Putting a bounty on someone is a way to convert berries (game currency) into reputation points. Those points are used to rank pirates and marines. The highest-ranking players will have specific titles such as supernovas, warlords, etc. People who want to obtain great rank don’t have to be scared to lose their bounty because it is the reputation points that matter and you can’t lose them by dying. Reputation Points You kill one person in a danger zone; his level is added to your current reputation point and bounty. You get killed in a danger zone; you don’t lose your reputation points, but your bounty gets halved. Bounty You put a bounty on the head of someone; You get half of the bounty you put as reputation points. Once the person with a bounty on his head die and you are online; you get the other half of the bounty you put as reputation points. The person who killed him get half of his bounty as berries and the bounty of the person who died is halved. When X days pass after you put a bounty on the head of someone, you don't get reputation points if that person dies. You cannot add a bounty to a member of your crew. The best strategy is to put a bounty on the head of someone you are going to kill. However, if you don’t like PVP but want a great rank, you can still grind berries and put bounties on the head of active players who are most likely going to die. We thought about possible ways to abuse that system and here are the restrictions we implemented in order to fix those exploits. 　 Exploits Fixes Limit the amount of bounty that can be added in someone head per day depending on the one getting the bounty level. Limit the amount of time you can add a bounty to someone head per day depending on the level of the one who is putting the bounty. You can only get reputation points once every X time when you kill someone. If you kill him again before the X time is completed, you won’t gain the reputation points, but you will still get his bounty / 2. If someone has battle injuries and you kill him, you won’t gain anything (no bounty and no reputation points). It doesn’t even count as a PVP kill if the killer or the victim has battle injuries. With all of this added, it will be more efficient to just play the game like intended. There are still some exploits that need to be fixed, but that's what we thought about for now. If you have suggestions or any feedback, please consider joining our discord. Have a nice day and thanks for your time, Shenmue Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Aug 17th, 2021 on indieDB

Hello everybody, in the past few months, we’ve been working at a pretty fast pace so we can publish a playable version of the game this month of July. I am pleased to announce that Pirate Souls will launch an Alpha Release on 24th July. ALPHA GAMEPLAY Your adventure begins on a big island with a lot of landmarks to discover. Some drama is going on there that you will soon find yourself embroiled in. A lot of missions are available and some have different endings depending on how you chose to complete them. Make sure to talk to any villager that looks interesting, so as to not miss any missions. Be careful on your way though, as there are lots of different mobs and bosses around. The combat system is dynamic and full of techniques. Various combos and fighting styles available depending on the specialization you chose. More information here: Pirate Souls Specializations Overview. FEATURES Pirate Souls is categorized as an Indie Online RPG, with 2D Top Down Pixel Art graphics. It has basic features you may expect from this kind of game: inventory system, party system, trading, etc. However, we tried to make it stand out from others of its kind with small features that give it more excitement and realism. As a large focus of Pirate Souls is PvP and PvE, most of them were implemented with combat in mind. For example, you will be able to dodge any attack within a fight, perform attacks with combos, destroy your environment and even choose your running style! All those features help make the game more immersive. Our art style was also done having that in mind. The game interface is made of parchment paper and is clean and simple so only important information gets to your eyes. EXPECTATIONS We expect bugs and balance issues, because we have yet to test the game on a big scale. However, we will try to fix any issue that will come our way as soon as possible. Feel free to report bugs in the bugs session of our discord when the time will come! WHAT'S LEFT? What is left content-wise is to add more missions and complete the bounty system. We want the end game content to be interesting and challenging. Missions and bounties will definitely help with that. We also want to improve the crew system by doing global organizations that smaller crews can join. That will fit well for marines or pirates alliance. In the long term, we plan on adding more islands and a ship system. However, that will probably be for a beta version of the game. WILL THERE BE A WIPE ? We don’t expect to wipe during the alpha. However, once a beta version of the game is released, there will definitely be a wipe. Another scenario where a wipe may be needed is if we have to implement a new feature that overhauls the game so much that it requires a wipe. It would have to be something very important like a major exploit fix or a highly anticipated update. HOW LONG WILL THE ALPHA LAST? We plan the alpha to last at least two-three months. After that, depending on the player base and the interest, we may keep it online longer. SPECIAL THANKS We would like to thank Rory, creator of Nin Online, who helped us improve our vision of the game and gave us valuable information. On top of that, some of you may have already noticed, but Hitspark (The Developers/Publishers of Nin Online) is going to be the publisher of Pirate Souls. Special thanks to JC Snider, Panda, Kibbelz and Cheshire, main developers of Intersect Engine, the engine we use for the game. It’s really great and has a lot of features. Thanks to everybody who helped us build the game and to the people who support us daily! See you in-game! Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Jul 3rd, 2021 on indieDB

Hello sailors, We have been working a lot on Pirate Souls lately and, for this development log, rather than talking about maps progression, we will talk about the game fighting system in general and more precisely, specializations. You start as a villager without any specialization (class) until a certain level so you have the time to try all the different types of playstyle before choosing the one you prefer. Once you reach the required level to specialize yourself, you will be able to choose between 3 different specializations: Fighter, Swordsman and Sniper. SPECIALIZATIONS Fighter is the most energetic and fluid specialty of the game. It is filled with small cast time attacks and good combo opportunities. Its range is very small, and its techniques are mainly meant for 1v1 even if most of them can hit multiple enemies at once (AoE). Swordsmen will likely trend to carry a melee weapon with them. Their abilities are mostly close-range and they have a cast time that will make it rather difficult to hit a moving target. In order to balance that, we made so it has a good combo potential when one of its technique lands. Just like fighters, swordsmen perform very well in solo fight scenarios, but the difference between the two specialties is that swordsmen are more specialized on hitting one single target. Snipers master any type of gun. They are professional in long-range fights, but do low damages. Even if they strike fast in a long distance, it will still be hard for them to hit a melee fighter as they move a lot. SOUL FRUITS To add more depth to the fighting system, there are soul fruits that can give special power. Soul fruits are completely outside of specializations. Each of them has its own skill tree so you will be able to combine your specialization with a soul fruit. However, you can play the game without them if you feel like it. People using it will be vulnerable to sea stone weapons. Currently, we have Fire, Ice, Leopard, Light, Reindeer and Rubber soul fruit. We still don’t know yet what will be the best way to handle the soul fruit system. If you have suggestions, please consider joining our discord. Rubberband Soul Fruit Ice Soul Fruit Light Soul Fruit Fire Soul Fruit Leopard Soul Fruit Thanks for your time, Shenmue Disclaimer: This is an old topic, the original release date is Apr 20th, 2021 on indieDB